Ryu Do-ha felt wronged.
The thing she considered most important in life was work-life balance.
And she wanted the so-called 'sucking honey' life, tilted extremely toward the 'life' rather than the 'work.'
That was the reason she had joined the Formless Special Division in the first place.
Do you know how many cases involving supernatural phenomena occur in a year?
A hundred? A thousand?
No. A few dozen at most.
And most of those are trivial matters stemming from misunderstandings.
Hardly any work to do.
And yet the pay is surprisingly solid.
It isn't even dangerous, and there's hazard pay.
It's a state agency, so there's a pension when you retire!
To her, the Formless Special Division was truly the honey among honey jobs.
But starting a few years ago, the situation changed abruptly.
Namely, the damned Ghost Story incidents began.
Ghost Stories that had floated around the internet, the light ones passed along by word of mouth, suddenly began happening in reality!
Nobody knows the cause.
Without even being told why, she just had a hell of a lot more work to do.
Overtime, early shifts, and business trips, things she'd believed would never concern her, had become all too familiar.
She'd tried to quit when she couldn't take it anymore, but she was told she couldn't.
They won't let go of her, going so far as to make the absurd demand that if she leaves, she return every bit of the power she holds.
Sigh.
The only thing increasing by the day is her sighing.
But what can she do?
If they say jump, you jump.
Finding that 'flyer' today had in fact been a coincidence.
She was heading home after work when she felt a certain aura.
She considered ignoring it, but went to look, and there was that 'flyer' lying on the ground.
A sigh leaked out on its own.
Strangely, since the Ghost Story incidents began, she'd been buried in work.
She thought about pretending she hadn't seen it and walking on, but she hadn't fallen far enough to walk past something suspicious once she'd found it.
As it happened, the time posted on the flyer had almost arrived, and she dragged her heavy feet to the fourth floor of the Olympic Sports Center.
Intending to rescue anyone who might have been dragged in.
But the atmosphere here isn't ordinary.
She'd assumed it was a light Ghost Story riding the current trend, but the malice she feels on her skin goes past the limit.
Watching the people lined up before the machine arm with its syringes, she was certain.
That this was absolutely not an immature Ghost Story formed only recently.
The one saving grace was that fewer people had been dragged in than she'd expected.
A middle-aged woman who looked to be in her fifties and a young woman who seemed to have just reached adulthood.
And one man who looked to be in his twenties.
Three people dragged into the Ghost Story.
The problem was the thing inside the man's stomach.
Gu poison.
Gu poison was a curse the Formless Special Division created to control violent criminals.
She had misgivings about using it, but Gu poison inside a body meant he was not a good person.
In all likelihood he was a 'Crow.'
The filthy breed that rushes in whenever a Ghost Story incident occurs, hoping to scavenge even a scrap.
And judging by the fact that Gu poison had been used on him, the worst of the worst.
But as she keeps watching him, he's dopey for a 'Crow.'
Wondering if she'd been mistaken, she checked again, and the aura she feels is definitely Gu poison.
At first she thought about cutting him out entirely, but after a brief deliberation she decided to trust her instincts.
So she extended her hand to him first.
Because getting out of this malice-filled Ghost Story would take every pair of hands she could get.
***
She glares at me for a long while, then abruptly shoves something in front of my eyes.
A business card.
What's printed on it is....
[Formless Special Division, Special Assignment Squad, Squad Leader Ryu Do-ha.]
Formless Special Division...?
The Formless Special Division, that's the woman called Hong Yeon and the man who fed me the bug.
That's the organization those two belong to!
When I react with shock, one corner of her mouth curls up.
"From that reaction, you're a Crow all right."
"What? No, no!"
"If you're not a Crow, why would you be shocked by this? You already knew about the Formless Special Division."
"Huh? No, that's not it...."
"And besides..."
She raises a finger in front of my face and jabs it at my solar plexus.
"What's in here."
Gu poison.
That bug inside my stomach.
"This is something they only put in violent criminals, you know?"
Only put in violent criminals?
They put that in my body?
When I stood there with a shocked face, she came over and threw an arm around my shoulder.
"Hey, don't chicken out."
Chicken out? When did I?
I was just a little thrown, that's all....
"Cooperate properly and I won't haul you in."
"How exactly do I cooperate...?"
"From now on, you obey my orders with no sense of self whatsoever."
"No sense of self? Why would I?"
"You've noticed this isn't an easygoing Ghost Story, haven't you? So let's not waste each other's energy."
"......."
It stings a little, but thinking coolly, following her is the right call right now.
There's no time to explain how this bug got into my body, and even if I explained, the odds she'd believe me are low.
And as it stands, her goal and mine are the same anyway.
She must have taken my silence for assent; Ryu Do-ha turned to the others and spoke.
"All right, everyone, shall we exchange names quickly?"
"What? Right now?"
"In the changing room we were too busy watching our backs to have the time."
The young woman's eyes widen at Ryu Do-ha's suggestion, and
"Can't you see the clock running down? There's no time for that."
The middle-aged woman snaps out of nowhere.
Not really out of nowhere; it's a situation that warrants anger.
The electronic display above the door to the pool.
The number on it right now is
[ 00 : 08 : 56 ]
One of our ten minutes has already gone.
And in a situation like this she wants to exchange names.
"Don't worry. I'm an expert at handling this kind of uncanny incident."
Ryu Do-ha answers, and pats my shoulder.
"This guy will work for your safe trip home too, so just trust us."
Maybe it's because they saw her cornering me a moment ago; the middle-aged woman and the young woman look at me with suspicion.
Under those looks I dropped my head without meaning to.
"And it's good to know your names, just in case."
"In case of what...?"
"You're better off not hearing it."
At her answer, the middle-aged woman's face darkens sharply.
"So you're saying I could d...... die here?"
"What I can tell you is that the faster you cooperate with me, the higher your survival odds."
The middle-aged woman reluctantly accepts it.
Satisfied with that, Ryu Do-ha smiled and introduced herself first.
"My name is Ryu Do-ha. Given the circumstances, let's skip the other explanations. Now, would you give your name first?"
At her prompting, the introductions began with the young woman.
"I'm... Jang Seo-yun."
"Kim Mi-ae."
"Kang Do-yul...."
When the brief introductions ended, Ryu Do-ha clapped her hands with a CLAP!
"All right then! Shall we work out a plan together?"
"A plan?"
"As you've all no doubt noticed, what's happening here is not a simple game."
The two focus on her with tense faces.
"You have been dragged into a Ghost Story."
"A Ghost Story......?"
"Ghost Story or whatever, can't you hurry it up?"
The middle-aged woman looks at the timer.
The time remaining on it is
[ 00 : 07 : 23 ]
Nearly three of the Robbers' ten minutes are already gone.
Even seeing that, Ryu Do-ha looks unexpectedly relaxed.
"I told you, didn't I? That I'm an expert at solving cases like this."
She took something from the bag at her waist and set it on the floor.
A green mosquito coil, wound round and round.
"Why that all of a sudden...?"
Instead of answering she takes out a lighter and lights it.
Gray smoke rises and quickly fills the space.
With it, the timer's countdown gradually slowed, and before long stopped completely.
"Whoa!"
Jang Seo-yun is astonished.
She wasn't the only one.
I was astonished too.
What just happened? Did time stop?
No, it didn't seem like time had stopped.
The bead of sweat on my arm right now.
Because that bead was running downward.
Then what does that mosquito coil do?
And why did the timer stop?
"If you had something like that, you should have used it ages ago!"
The middle-aged woman is still loud.
Ryu Do-ha answered her calmly.
"I needed to observe the situation first."
"The situation?"
When I cut in, Ryu Do-ha scowls hard at me to shut up.
Seriously, I keep quiet and she treats me like an actual criminal?
"Our goal is to hold out without being caught by the Cops, right?"
Ignoring me, Ryu Do-ha continues, looking at the other two.
"It struck me that this place is fairly suitable for holding out. The white doors we and he came through have locks, so we lock them, and the four of us only have to block that door to the pool."
"That's right! We can hold out here!"
At the middle-aged woman's exclamation, Ryu Do-ha shook her head.
"In the three minutes we've been here, the temperature has risen by about eight degrees."
"The temperature went up?"
"And the rate is accelerating, so by the time the ten minutes are up it will have risen at least fifty more. It was around thirty degrees when we first came in, so the interior will end up at eighty, won't it?"
"Eighty degrees, we could just treat it as a sauna...."
"And if it keeps rising past the ten minutes? Besides, we don't know how long we have to hold out. Can you last several hours in a sauna?"
"......."
With nothing to say, the middle-aged woman clamps her mouth shut.
"In the end this isn't a suitable place to hold out. We have to find another way. For instance, going to the pool as we've been directed and finding somewhere to hide..."
"Not the pool!"
When Ryu Do-ha looked steadily at her after the outburst, the middle-aged woman went on, looking embarrassed.
"I've been coming to this pool for years. There isn't a single pillar in there. There's nowhere to hide to begin with."
Then Jang Seo-yun, silent until now, spoke.
"Then how about exploiting a gap and going back to the changing rooms?"
Back to the changing rooms?
Did everyone think it a fairly plausible idea? All eyes gathered on Jang Seo-yun.
Encouraged by that, she continued haltingly.
"When I looked earlier, there were surprisingly many places to hide in the changing room. The supply closet or the lounge might work well..."
"Going back to the changing rooms won't work."
"What?"
Her eyes go round at my words.
She must have been confident in her idea, but there's one thing she overlooked.
"There's a staff member in the changing room."
"A staff member?"
"The bastard in human skin that tore the man's arms off at the entrance."
They look at me like they have no idea what I'm talking about.
"There was a 'staff member' in the men's changing room?"
Ryu Do-ha asked me with a frown.
"There wasn't one in the women's?"
"There wasn't."
"Then who gave you your locker keys?"
She takes something out of her bag.
A long strip of paper, like a receipt.
Looking closely, it actually was a receipt.
The one difference from an ordinary receipt is the QR code at the bottom.
"You submitted blood at the entrance and got a receipt. We got our locker keys with the code on it."
"That's right. I scanned it at the unmanned machine and a key came out...."
Hold on, you submit blood and get a receipt?
Then of course I wouldn't know.
Because thanks to my membership, I never submitted blood.
.......
Come to think of it, they don't know I have a membership.
Because in the line at the entrance, they were all standing ahead of me.
"Anything else unusual besides that?"
At her question I briefly explained what happened in the changing room.
Hiding the Pond Snail's existence and my membership, of course.
I don't know exactly what a 'Crow' is, but with her already mistaking me for one, there's no need to feed the suspicion.
She sinks into thought after hearing me out.
Soon she spoke.
"Seems like you left one thing out."
"What? Left out?"
"That thing you're hiding in your swimsuit."
Huh?
"Why haven't you said anything about that?"
"......."
Her gaze, which had been on me, travels slowly downward.
To my swim trunks, precisely where I'd hidden the pen.
......
She knew all along?